Infrastructures of Now

This exhibition features work of contemporary practitioners aligned with heritage artefacts from the NCAD campus and NIVAL collections.

Friday, 21st September - Friday, 30th November 2018

INFRASTRUCTURES OF NOW: An exhibition featuring contemporaneous practices of making.
Exhibition opening Friday 21 September 2018, Culture Night 2018, 17:00 — 21:00
Exhibition continues: Monday 24 September — Friday 30 November 2018, Monday — Friday, 11:00 — 17:00

Infrastructures of Now exhibiting practitioners include, Alan Butler & Elaine Hoey, Adrian Duncan, Andrew Folan, Jessica Foley, Shane Keeling, Tom O’Dea and Mark O'Kelly. The exhibition features the work of contemporary practitioners aligned with heritage artefacts from the campus collections of the National College of Art and Design, Ireland (NCAD), and foregrounds the Leslie Eastwood Textiles Design Documentation Collection housed at the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL). Infrastructures of Now is curated by Anne Kelly for the NCAD Gallery.
 
Infrastructures of Now highlights both practitioner and institutional strategies in negotiating sustainable visual arts practices in contemporary life. The exhibition biographical information inadvertently discloses the exhibitors varying modes of professional practice: how they operate in this moment, the spaces they inhabit, on which operational / institutional opportunities they depend and questions of autonomy.
Within the context of the Institution, Infrastructures of Now declares to be a point of reference for the forthcoming campus-wide series of events on the subject of 'the future of making', in Spring 2019.


EXHIBITION EVENTS
  • Friday 30 November 2018 NCAD Gallery: 14:30 — 16:30: Remaining Useful Life Stranger Fictions Workshop: Writer & artist Jessica Foley with catalysts Harun Siljak (EDGE Fellow) and Anne Kelly (Curator, NCAD Gallery). Limited places, information and booking at this LINK.
     
  • Friday 30 November 2018 Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre, NCAD, 12:30 — 13:30: Leaders in Research (LiR) Series 4: EDGE Fellows | National College of Art and Design (NCAD) event partnership. Dr Alessandra Sala of Bell Labs & Enda O'Dowd of NCAD Design Faculty discuss how much collaboration featured and how much working in the arts v science v both impacted and enhanced their own career pathways. More nfomation at this LINK.
     
  • Friday 21 September Culture Night 2018, NCAD Gallery, 17:00: Rory Hanrahan, measurement engineer at the National Metrology Laboratory (NML) of NSAI (National Standards Authority of Ireland), discusses the changes of representation to the standard of international measurement (SI) from the material kilogram object to quantum-based measurement, w/ Q&A.
  • Friday 21 September Culture Night 2018, NCAD Gallery, 17:30: Adrian Duncan reads from SITE ART (Love Notes from a German Building Site, a novel, Spring 2019, Lilliput Press).
  • Friday 21 September Culture Night 2018, Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre, NCAD, 19:00 — 21:00: Soundwork performances by Dylan Kerr (19:00) and Colm KeadyTabbal (20:00). 
Plase find exhibitor's and exhibit information below.


Image credit: Reproduction Egyptian Royal Cubit measuring-rod (detail), exhibit on loan from the NSAI (National Standards Authority of Ireland), National Metrology Laboratory (NML) Ireland on the occasion of the exhibition, Infrastructures of Now: An exhibition featuring contemporaneous practices of making, curated by Anne Kelly, NCAD Gallery, Friday 21 September 2018 — Saturday 1 December 2018. Image courtesy of the artist Tom O'Dea, photography Neil Smyth, 2018.
 
Exhibitors Information ____________________________________________________________________________
 
Alan Butler's work explores material and philosophical ideas about how imagery and meaning function in technologically mediated realities. His subject often ties together the cultural dogma that underpins visual languages, with algorithmic modes of being in western capitalist societies. He received his MFA from LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore (2009). and BA in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (2004).
Recent activities include solo exhibitions The Need To Argue In The Master’s Language, Visual Carlow, Ireland (2018); Down and Out in Los Santos, Malmö Fotobiennal, Sweden (2017); HELIOSYNTH, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin (2017); We Were Promised Anarchy, But What We Got Was Chaos, Solstice Art Centre, Ireland (2015); Youth Outreach In N. Korea, Supermarket, Stockholm, Sweden (2015); The Parallax View, Ormston House, Limerick, Ireland (2014); and group exhibitions Weird Capitalism, Transfer, New York (2018); Back to the Future, C/O Berlin (2018); Traces, Kasteel Wijlre, The Netherlands (2018); SITUATIONS/Posthuman, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2018); States of Play: Roleplay Reality, FACT, Liverpool, England (2018); When Facts Don’t Matter, St Carthage Hall, Lismore Castle, Ireland (2018); As Above, So Below, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2017); Les Rencontres d'Arles, France (2017); Scissors Cuts Paper Wraps Stone, CCA Derry/Londonderry (2016) ; FUTURES: Anthology 2, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland (2015); Telling Lies, RUA RED, Dublin, Ireland (2015); Please return, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2015), among others. http://www.alanbutler.info/
 
Adrian Duncan is an artist and writer based in Ireland and Berlin. His visual-art work is primarily installation based, most often using photography, film and sculpture. His process of making and the aesthetic of his works derives from an interest in language, and the processes of construction – amateur and professional. His writing has been published by Frieze, the Times Literary Supplement (UK), Art & the Public Sphere (UK), the Dublin Review, Architecture Ireland and the Irish Times, among others. His debut novel, published by The Lilliput Press, will appear in Spring 2019.
He is coeditor of Paper Visual Art Journal (IRL/DE). In 2018 he exhibited, in collaboration with Feargal Ward, a large-scale film/sculptural installation work titled The Soil Became Scandinavian, as part of EVA 2018, curated by Inti Guerrero. During 2018/19 he and Ward are also co-directing a feature-length film on the subject of engineer Peter Rice.
From 1995 Duncan studied and worked as a structural engineer for over a decade in the U.K. and Ireland. He received his chartership from the I.E.I. (Irish Engineering Institute) in 2007, before returning to study fine art at IADT, Dún Laoghaire in 2008. He received a 1st class M.A. (Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD, Dublin) in 2011. He has guest tutored and guest lectured at UCD School of Architecture, Dublin; UCC School of Architecture, Cork; NCAD, Dublin; and Crawford College of Art, Cork. http://www.adrianduncan.eu/
 
Andrew Folan is an artist based in Dublin who primarily works in print, photography and sculpture. Recent works have combined digital processes and print in multi-layered composite photo-montage. He is an active collaborator in scientific, medical and architectural projects and participated in the Digital Surface presented at Tate Britain (2003). Essentially a conceptual artist, Folan has more recently explored concerns of a social, psychological and scientific nature. While he is concerned with issue based reasoning, process is always an important component and his productions are usually delivered in a formalist and often highly labour intensive manner.
Folan graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 1981, and with a Phd from the NCAD. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe. His solo exhibition of printed sculptures Arterial Ink toured to a number of venues in Ireland as well as London, Paris and Stockholm (1991-2001). His solo exhibition of digital lambdachromes Stray Light was shown at the Ashford Gallery, Dublin in 2002. He participated in a group exhibition Dead Bodies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris in 2003. In 2006 he completed a sculptural installation The Fleet Morph at the Mater Hospital Dublin. In 2008 he completed a commission Anatomy of an Instrument for the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, using CT scanning as the central research component. He presented a paper, Grasping the Untouchable at The International Symposium on Electronic Art,  Belfast, 2009. His work is the collections of the Arts Council, Dublin, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Central Bank of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin. http://www.seeingnotbelieving.com/
 
Jessica Foley works as a writer, transdisciplinary researcher and practitioner. She is a co-founding member of the Orthogonal Methods Group and is currently writer-in-residence at CONNECT, the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Future Networks and Communications. The Orthogonal Methods Group are unique in this context, bringing creative arts practices, critical pedagogy, feminist STS and new materialisms, new media scholarship and anthropology into critical conversation with science and technology research and industry.
Since 2013, Jessica has pioneered a research-creation method called Engineering Fictions with engineering researchers and artists. Engineering Fictions, and its twin Stranger Fictions, is a writing workshop that embraces the power of fiction and writing to foster and exercise creativity, honesty, diversity and ethical courage in Science and Technology research and industry.
Working contingently with people and contexts, materials and texts from across the worlds of contemporary art and design, education and engineering, Jessica’s work focuses on opening up possibilities for embodied criticality and creative thinking and practices in ways that can support processes of change, healthy relations of difference and the enlargement of generosity and community. Jessica’s transdisciplinary practice is informed by her education in Graphic Design (B.Des. LSAD), Art and Design Education (H.Dip. LSAD), Contemporary Art (MA Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD)  and Telecommunications Engineering (PhD. CTVR/TCD). In October 2018, Jessica will begin a two-year Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship with Maynooth University, exploring the function of fiction in parsing the worlds of ‘smart cities’ and ‘internet of things’. https://connectcentre.ie/omg  www.jessicafoleywriting.com
 
Elaine Hoey works mainly creating interactive based installations, appropriating contemporary digital art practices and aesthetics to explore the politics of digital humanity and our evolving relationship with the screen. Hoey's practice focuses on the intersection between the media, technology and politics. Exhibitions include, 'the Weight of Water' Draiocht, Dublin (solo). She is a recent BA Fine Art Media and MFA Fine Art graduate of the NCAD and is a recipient of the RDS Visual Arts Awards 2016. https://www.elainehoey.com/
 
Shane Keeling graduated with a BA from the NCAD Ceramics Department in 2018. He works predominantly in ceramic to make large scale sculptures, as well as performance work. Keeling is the NCAD Ceramic Residency 2018 awardee. The residency is a platform for artist makers to gain further experience within their chosen field, providing awardees' with access to a wide range of facilities while simultaneously providing technical support situated in the Ceramics Department at the NCAD. The NCAD Gallery has commissioned new work from Keeling for the Infrastructure of Now exhibition.
 
Tom O’Dea is an artist, researcher and active member of the Orthogonal Methods Group (OMG) at CONNECT in Trinity. He has a background in mechanical engineering. O’Dea’s work is focused on the interplay of technologies and power. More specifically, he is interested in the politics of scientific knowledge and, as an extension of this, how ways of describing the world through computational structures impact the possibilities for our being, acting and thinking in the world. His work has examined how data driven practices of self-tracking such as social media and health trackers, genetics and climate change modelling mediate our relationship with our bodies and the environment. These interests have brought O’Dea to focus particularly on measurement technologies – ways of encoding the material and immaterial phenomena that make up existence in abstract representational forms – and the way these act to express, suppress, illuminate or obscure political affects, power inequalities and knowledge hierarchies. His practice investigates measurement practices at both the theoretical level and in their practical implementation throughout society. Recent activities include exhibitions 1967-2017 IMMA (2017-8) w/OMG; Self-Portrait SNP, National Gallery of Ireland (2017-8), The Width of Air, Carter Rd. Mumbai and NYU Gallery Shanghai (2016) w/Stereotropic Anecdota; and an art practice based PhD in Computer Science. His work for Infrastructures of Now is supported by CONNECT, the Provost's Visual and Performing Arts Fund of Trinity College Dublin and the National Standards Authority of Ireland National Metrology Laboratory. http://iamtomodea.com/
 
Mark O'Kelly is an artist living and working in Dublin and is Head of Fine Art Painting at the National College of Art and Design, Ireland. O'Kelly's painting practice demonstrates a sustained engagement with theories of representation, reproduction and quotation towards investigations around questions of cognitive representation and the psychological poetry of the image. The imagined public spaces that result within his architecture of pictures narrates consciousness formation in contemporary public interaction within cosmetic image cultures.
Selected past exhibitions include, It’s Very New School, Rua Red, Tallaght, 2017, EMPIRELAND, Project Arts Centre, 2016 (solo), AGITATIONISM EVA International Biennale 2014, Periodical Review 2, Pallas Projects, Dublin, 2012/13. After the Future, EVA International Biennale, Limerick, 2012. Last, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2012. Transitive Relationships, Limerick City Gallery of Art 2012. Figure of 8, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery Dublin 2011, (solo). Leaders and Followers, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin 2010, (solo) Cinema Impero, Occupy Space, Limerick 2010, (solo). Unconscious, The Black Mariah, Cork, 2009, (solo). Mark O’Kelly, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, 2008, (solo). Selective Knowledge, ITYS, National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, Eynard Mansion, Athens 2008. Mark O’Kelly and Stephen Loughman, Galway Arts Centre, 2008. Presence, Limerick City Gallery of Art, 2007. New Territories; Cityscapes, ARCO Madrid, 2006,Other Visions: Representation in Contemporary Irish Painting and Photography, Purdy Hicks, London 2006, In Fashion, Limerick City Gallery of Art, 2005, (solo). Mark O'Kelly studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, 1985-1990 and at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, 1990- 1992. www.markokelly.ie

Performers Information ________________________________________________________
 
Colm Keady Tabbal is currently based in Dublin and is studying fine art in candidacy for a BA degree at the NCAD. Keady Tabbal makes site and place-specific sound performances to take advantage of predetermined acoustic characteristics of the spaces he locates. He commented on a recent performance experience, stating, 'Making this work within an institution meant negotiating the space with other makers. The levels of silence or noise I made were determined by other occupants in the space; by incorporating recorded sounds of dragging furniture or of people’s voices, they became part of the work.'
 
Dylan Kerr is currently based in Dublin and is studying fine art in candidacy for a BA degree at the NCAD. Kerr works mainly in the mediums of live performance and sound, predominantly examining themes of tradition, Irishness, queerness and current social issues. His most recent works have been durational performances lasting for several hours, which incorporated live electronics, vocals, flute and spoken word. In Autumn of 2018, Kerr will move to Poland to further his education.
 ____________________________________________________________________________

* The Leslie Eastwood Textiles Design Documentation Collection is exhibited by kind permission courtesy of the Eastwood Family, on loan from the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) at the National College of Art and Design, Ireland.

Three Standard Units, reproduced Egyptian Royal Cubit, Former Irish National Reference Metre, wooden Yard Stick, are exhibited on loan by kind permission courtesy of the NSAI (National Standards Authority of Ireland) National Metrology Laboratory (NML) Ireland, with thanks to Paul Hetherington (NML). 

The Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures c. 447— 438 BC, exhibited fragments/ copies made in 1949 (NCAD Collection), are a collection of Classical Greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of the architect and sculptor Phidias and his assistants. They were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. From 1801 to 1812, agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire) removed about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon, as well as sculptures from the Propylaea and Erechtheum, to transport them by sea to Britain. Today, the original artefacts are housed at the British Museum in London.
 
Anne Kelly is the curator of Infrastructures of Now & the NCAD Gallery Programme Curator. NCAD Gallery, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin D08 K521, Ireland.  twitter.com/NCAD_Gallery  /  instagram.com/ncad_gallery  /  facebook.com/NCADGallery
 
Image credit: 'Continental Luxury Coach Travel' Shannon Velours textile design work (detail) c.1980, from the Leslie Eastwood Textile Design Documentation Collection housed at the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL), exhibited as part of the Infrastructures of Now exhibition curated by Anne Kelly for the NCAD Gallery, Friday 21 September 2018 — Saturday 1 December 2018. Photography Anne Kelly.
 
Infrastructures of Now Exhibition Listings ________________________________________
 
A. Adrian Duncan: Love Notes From A German Building Site, 2018, mixed media sculptures (dimensions variable), digital photographs on archival paper, 22 x 31cm each, POA.
B. Jessica Foley: Holes (12mins), 2018, audio-sculptural textual piece with beach stones, tech inflected nature poem responds to the geology and topography of Portrane, Fingal, Co. Dublin. Developed as part of Fingal County Council's Arts Office's Resort Revelations 2018 Residency & Public Art programme located at Lynders Mobile Home Park, Portrane. POA
C. Mark O'Kelly: Leaders and Followers, 2010, Oil paint on linen, 180 x 250 cm. Price: E19,000.00.
D. The Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures c.447 — 438, exhibited fragments/ copies made in 1949, (NCAD Collection), are a collection of Classical Greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of the architect and sculptor Phidias and his assistants. They were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. From 1801 to 1812, agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire) removed about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon, as well as sculptures from the Propylaea and Erechtheum, to transport them by sea to Britain. Today, the original artefacts are housed at the British Museum, London. NFS
E. Leslie Eastwood Textile Design Documentation Collection is exhibited by kind permission courtesy of the Eastwood Family, on loan from the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) at the National College of Art and Design, Ireland. (PTO for vitrine and wall labels). NFS
F. Alan Butler & Elaine Hoey: Prospero AI (7.40mins), 2018, video. Developed as part of the Akademie Schloss Solitude international artist residency program in Stuttgart, Germany. POA
G. Tom O’Dea: A Séance for Pierre Méchain, 2018, TFT Displays, Raspberry Pi w/ Raspbian OS, overclocked serial communications and custom Java software, printed circuit boards, signal cables, power cables, AC-DC transformers, cable tray: even-tee connectors/ flat-bend connectors/ earth couplers/ tray couplers/ stand-off brackets, machine screws, nuts, bolts, standoffs; The Ontological Singularity, 2018, fictional text printed on paper (floor); Fontaine D’Or, 2018, (floor) Scribe, 2-Axis CNC Plotter, Raspberry Pi w/ Raspbian OS and custom Java software, TFT display, HDMI cable, USB cable, power cables, AC-DC transformers, cable tray, stand-off brackets, machine screws, nuts, bolts, standoffs; Vitrine: Three Standard Units Reproduced Egyptian Royal Cubit, Former Irish National Reference Metre, Wooden Yard Stick. (Vitrine items all on loan by kind permission courtesy of the NSAI (National Standards Authority of Ireland) National Metrology Laboratory (NML) Ireland, with thanks to Paul Hetherington (NML). Additional exhibition text (Gallery desk): Pierre Françoise André Méchain – Selected Biography. POA
H. Shane Keeling: Skrew U Series, 2018, ceramic slip cast vessel with screws and on-glaze sgraffito illustrated surface. Price: 260.00euro each; F'N Badman Series, 2018 ceramic slip   cast vessels illustrated using ceramic crayon. Price: 220.00euro each.
I. Andrew Folan, The Prometheus, 2010, digital animation; Prometheus Bound, 2012, Laser sintered polyamide in dome glass case (five iterations from the animation); The Actual   Prometheus, 2010, series of four iterations of sintered polyamide. POA
J. Artefacts & Tools of Making (Gallery Foyer) from the College and Staff collections of the National College of Art and Design, Ireland.  NFS
 
E.  Leslie Eastwood Textiles Documentation Collection - from the textiles factory in Syngfield, Birr, Co. Offaly, Ireland: E.B Woods & Sons textiles factory (1956) / Birr Fabrics Ltd. (1965) / Max Birr Ltd. (1981) / Shannon Velours factory (1990) - company timeline detailed below.
Wall work
1
. Design 1573, point paper, paint, ‘2nd Frame Point Paper, 3rd Frame Point Black’ (8x8 pts/dots per sq inch), c.1956-69.
2. Design 1521, point paper, paint, ‘2nd Frame Point Paper, 3rd Frame Point Red’. (8x8 pts/dots per sq inch), 1964.
3. Point paper design work, paint, ‘2nd Frame Point Paper, 3rd Frame Point Black’. (8x8 pts/dots per sq inch), c.1956-69
4. Design 2483, point paper, paint, ‘1st Frame Point Paper Red-Blue, 2nd Frame Point Paper Green-Blue’, 1965.
Vitrine
5
. Max Birr Ltd. design work project notes for Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) Dublin Bus and Iaronrod Éireann (Irish Rail) c.1983, including references to and samples for Dublin Bus and DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) textile seating upholstery.
6. 7. &  8.  Point design process work for CIÉ, 1983.
9.  ‘Knowledge of Materials’, Leslie Eastwood’s personal professional work reference notebook.
10. Photograph, B+W, (12640/74 by C.H. Wood Photography & Film Prod.) detail of the Jacquard Loom Machine, Max Birr Ltd.
11. Article on Max Birr Ltd., ‘Manufacturers of moquette and double cut plush pile heavy duty upholstery’,  from the section ‘Bus & Coach Refurbishing’ published in Irish Bus and Coach, pg.95. c. 1980.
12. Photograph, colour, Max Birr Ltd. c.1980 
13. Photograph, B+W, (12637/74 by C.H. Wood Photography & Film Prod.) of the Jacquard Loom Machine, Max Birr Ltd.
14. ‘Wings’, sample textile of woven wall hanging design for musician Paul McCartney’s office, c.1971.
15. Photograph of Leslie Eastwood in his forties, c.1970.
16. Leslie Eastwood/ Max Birr Ltd. design work project notes for DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit), Texas, USA, 1984.
17. Sample textile with logo for DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit), Texas, USA, 1984.
18. ‘Continental Luxury Coach Seating’, Shannon Velours Ltd. project workbook and design sketch, c.1980.

Timeline of the E.B Woods & Sons textiles factory (1956) to Shannon Velours factory (1990).
1956 E.B Woods & Sons textiles factory opens (owned by Ernest (Ernie) B Woods of Bramley, Yorkshire, England) in Birr, Co. Offaly, Ireland.
The company name changes to Birr Fabrics Ltd. in 1965 when it changes ownership.
1965 Birr Fabrics Ltd opens (set up and operated by Shannon Development and the IDA (Ireland Development Authority). Leslie Eastwood (b.1931—1999) becomes a lead designer for the Company.
1980 Birr Fabrics Ltd. is liquidated.
1981 Max Birr Ltd. opens (parent company Chardon of France until 1990’s).
1990 Shannon Velours Ltd. opens (owned by John Holdsworth, by 1992 the company is in receivership and closes).